Brexit. Why do Brits want Out of the EU?

Both sides in the European referendum debate stand accused of making “misleading and inaccurate” claims about the pro and cons of Britain’s membership in an attempt to sway votes in their favour.

A group of academics and an independent organisation that ‘fact checks’ assertions made by politicians found that both ‘remain’ and ‘leave’ campaigners were guilty of passing off questionable claims as truth.

And they warned that the public were being ill-served by the standard of the debate as a result of being “bombarded” by conflicting claims that at best were “unsupported by evidence and at worse simply untrue”.

Lordyaswas wrote:

For instance, you very helpfully provided a chart and graph re. Payments, now please can you also provide a chart and graph to tell me the last audit date when Brussells had its books checked and "signed off", ie shown to balance.

I don't know if there's a chart and/or graph of the audits, but that's done by the European Court of Auditors every year. (That's all regulated in the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, but the UK had an opt-out here.)

The European Commission managed its 2014 EU budget funds according to the rules, so Parliament should grant it a 'discharge' (i.e. approval), for that year, the Budgetary Control Committee said on Thursday. Parliament’s own management of EU funds in 2014 was also approved, in a separate vote.
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MEPs are concerned that lever of error for spending, under the shared management of the Commission and Member states, amounts to 4,6% which is well above the 2% threshold beneath which the European Court of Auditors could classify payments as error-free. They note that the Commission, which is legally responsible for expenditure overall, should monitor closely the implementation in the member states which in fact manage locally 80% of all EU funding.
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The Commission should be fully responsible for recovery of the unduly paid funds into the EU budget, but to do so it should establish uniform principles of member state reporting, says the approved resolution.
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The Budgetary Control Committee’s recommendations will be put to a vote, by Parliament as a whole, on 28 April in Brussels. Parliament will take its final decision on the postponed discharges in October.

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/de/news-room/20160407IPR21704/EU-budget-management-Commission-and-Parliament-spending-for-2014-approved

I thought "commissar" was pretty negative.

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In the competition for “which side in the referendum can get the most impressive celebrities to back them” Obama is pretty much the trump card. Meanwhile those in the Brexit camp have Marie Le Pen speaking out on their behalf, perhaps unaware that most British people have quite a strong objection to racists. Oh and they don’t much like the French either.
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So this is the key issue of principle as I see it. If I voted leave, I’d be agreeing with Nigel Farage, George Galloway, Michael Gove, Bernie Ecclestone and Joan Collins. That clinches it, doesn’t it? And isn’t there an unassailable moral and economic argument that we must always do the opposite of whatever Iain Duncan Smith wants us to do. I may not know what that is exactly; I may have failed to weigh up all the contrasting claims, but that’s only because the overwhelming sensation I experience is “Oh not bloody Farage AGAIN!”
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Only George Osborne has truly tied his political fate to a victory for the remain side, and this leads to an uncomfortable sensation when those of us on the left find ourselves agreeing with him. “Well said, George, good point!” we exclaim at the TV, and then we feel disgusted with ourselves, running upstairs to the shower, plunging all our clothes into a boil wash. The discomfort is much the same when great pillars of capitalism such as the Bank of England or the International Monetary Fund come down firmly on our side. “See, that’s the IMF talking,” we say. “They’ve always been on the side of the ordinary British worker.”

It confuses the picture still further to see that half of the Conservative big beasts are playing to two different sets of voters – the great British public on one hand and the swivel-eyed little Englanders who make up most of their party membership on the other. So when Theresa May goes on TV to defend the EU, she uses the slot to say how membership makes it harder to curb immigration.
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Is it wrong to make decisions on the basis of personalities? I don’t think so. Democratic politics has always been about trust and delegation. We vote for politicians hoping they know more about what needs to be done than we do, assessing their values, their priorities and indeed their likability.

So in a mind-boggling referendum debate, it’s understandable that we should do the same. In fact, I think we should stop feeling guilty about this approach and just embrace it. The ballot paper should just feature two photos: one of Obama, the other of Galloway, perhaps dressed in his pussycat leotard from Celebrity Big Brother.

So this is the key issue of principle as I see it. If I voted leave, I’d be agreeing with Nigel Farage, George Galloway, Michael Gove, Bernie Ecclestone and Joan Collins. That clinches it, doesn’t it? And isn’t there an unassailable moral and economic argument that we must always do the opposite of whatever Iain Duncan Smith wants us to do. I may not know what that is exactly; I may have failed to weigh up all the contrasting claims, but that’s only because the overwhelming sensation I experience is “Oh not bloody Farage AGAIN!”

Poor Barack Obama, he must be devastated. To be criticised by Nigel Farage like that, I just hope the US president’s global popularity can survive. And then for Boris Johnson to point out that the president was “part-Kenyan”, well he must have felt so humiliated. For so long the US president had kept the fact that he was black a secret, and then Johnson let the cat out of the bag.

swivel-eyed little Englanders

Who is talking about the human rights?

“40 per cent of Labour voters are recorded as ones who wish to leave. That’s a basis on which we can build,” Mr Field said. “The Remain campaign is the government’s campaign and that’s another reason Labour voters will come out and give them a friendly punch on the nose.”

No doubt they will, but if they succeed, they’ll get Boris Johnson for their troubles, or worse, and for four more years. That’s a long time to be on the wrong horse.